"Alright." Kael's eyes narrowed. "What do you want? And don't you think this conversation is being recorded too?"
He said it like he'd found a foothold. Like he'd clawed something back from the edge of this conversation.
Axiros just smiled. "Don't worry about what I want just yet. And the recording — I've already taken care of that. Don't concern yourself with it. And before even thinking of killing me while I'm still a mortal, defeat Gary first."
Kael pulled back slightly, something shifting behind his eyes. 'How? He's mortal. Unawakened. How does an unawakened child handle something like that? Is he faking it? But then how did he get through my ability? And why does he imply that he is stronger than Gary?' The questions stacked without answers, and the foothold dissolved just as fast as it had appeared.
"I'm not faking anything," Axiros said pleasantly. "I truly am unawakened. In your sense of the word, at least."
Kael stared at him. Said nothing.
"And before you spiral too far, you benefit from what I'm proposing too. Keep that in mind."
He delivered it like an afterthought, casual and unhurried. But he knew exactly where it would land and exactly what it would do. A door left slightly open was always more effective than one kicked off its hinges.
"What do you want?" The alarm had drained out of Kael's voice, replaced by something flatter and more tired. The voice of someone who has just finished working out they're cornered and decided to stop pretending otherwise. "How do you know this much about me? I've barely known you thirty hours, awake that is."
He knew if he rejected, Axiros could manipulate this conversation, which enable Gary and the others to know his dire and dark secrets, ones meant to be locked away for eternity.
"Don't worry about my methods, little lamb." Axiros's tone softened just enough at the edges to pass for something close to warmth. "You have your secrets. I have mine. That puts us on even ground, in a way."
---
Humans were simultaneously the easiest and the hardest creatures to manipulate. The self-aware ones, the ones who'd fought their way to some real understanding of themselves, were like diamonds. Hard, resistant, difficult to get purchase on. But diamonds still broke. They just needed the right kind of pressure, applied close enough to whatever they actually cared about.
In a world like this, a good heart wasn't a virtue. It was a vulnerability. It didn't survive, it just became fuel for someone else's fire until there was nothing left.
---
"You'll be my contact in the base," Axiros said, settling back. "Feed me information when I need it. Represent my interests when the situation calls for it."
A lie, in the way most useful things were. Kael was a pawn, and pawns who understood the board they were sitting on became problems overnight. Better to dress it as partnership, shared stakes, mutual benefit. People were far easier to read and far easier to move when they believed they were choosing to cooperate rather than being quietly walked into it.
Kael was silent for a moment, the car humming steadily around them, the city blurring past the windows.
Then something shifted in his expression. His eyes changed, that faint shimmer rising beneath the irises as his ability stirred. He looked at Axiros properly this time. No assumptions, no half-sleep clouding things. Just looked, cleanly and directly.
And saw it.
"You're a little devil, aren't you." Flat. Not a question. His voice had gone almost calm, which made it sound worse than if he'd raised it. "Infiltrating a base whose people just pulled you out of a warzone and fed you breakfast." A short, humourless breath. "That's beyond cold. I've done genuinely vile things, things I don't talk about, and even I couldn't sit there and think like that."
He had seen the shape of it clearly. Axiros wanted him specifically, a runaway, someone already familiar with the particular weight of betrayal, planted inside the base and feeding outward. Whether the endgame was to hollow the place out slowly or simply own a quiet piece of it from the inside, the direction was unmistakable.
Axiros said nothing. Just watched him with that same patient, faintly amused expression, giving nothing back.
"You want to destroy them," Kael said quietly. "Or worse. You want to control them."
"When did I say I wanted to destroy them, little lamb?" Axiros said, half amused. "I merely want information. That's all."
"If you say so." Kael's ability found nothing, no lie, no deception. But his gut said otherwise, quietly and persistently, in that way intuition does when it knows something the mind can't yet prove.
"Can you at least tell me how the hell you figured out I had done… that?" Kael asked. "If I know how, I can fix it."
"You don't need to fix anything." Axiros's voice was gentle. Reassuring. "No one else in this world can see it, Kael. Only me. You're well hidden. You always have been."
And there it was. The exact emotion, pressed at the exact right angle. Kael's shoulders dropped a fraction, just enough. He didn't notice it himself.
Axiros noticed.
Truly a demon, in the quietest possible way.
He did know one risk. A fate check, someone with the ability and the authority to read the threads of a person's existence directly, would see through everything instantly. But he wasn't concerned. Nobody at this stage was strong enough to pull that off.
The ones who could were occupied elsewhere, every last one of them chasing the transcendent fruit, a fruit rumoured to let anyone shatter through a realm's ceiling entirely, no limits, no conditions. It had every powerful player in the world looking the other way.
Convenient timing, as far as Axiros was concerned.
"And one more thing, little lamb. Act along with me, no matter what, no matter the circumstances." Axiros said, as he contemplated on pulling more strings.
"Why? Tch, leave it. I won't even bother to question anymore." Kael sighed.
The rest of the journey passed without incident. Quiet roads, low hum of the engine, nothing worth noting. And the conversation itself, every word of it, had already been folded away, obscured completely by the same perfection that had been quietly running in the background the entire time. The camera, the recording, the content of what was said. All of it, handled by a single perfection without Axiros lifting a finger.
---
The house wasn't much to look at.
Small, a little worn, sitting on the quieter edge of Metneris where the city noise didn't quite reach. A garden out front that had clearly seen better days. The kind of place that existed outside of anyone's attention, which, as far as Axiros was concerned, made it perfect.
"Uncle Stark!" Kael called out toward the garden, hands cupped around his mouth. "The newbie's here!"
*Stark.* The name caught somewhere in the back of Axiros's mind and held there. *I know that name. If he's the same Stark from the novel, this just got considerably more interesting.*
"Send him in," came a voice from inside, rough and unhurried.
Axiros stepped through the door with Kael just behind him and quietly extended his awareness outward.
One life presence in the house. Just one, but the weight of it was something else entirely. Strong didn't quite cover it. He pushed his awareness further, down through the floor, toward the basement.
There it was. Exactly what he'd expected to find.
He kept his face neutral and let the smirk stay where it belonged, well out of sight. This was going to be one of the easier things he'd ever done.
A man was already looking at him from across the room. Big, relaxed in the particular way that people who've been genuinely dangerous for a long time tend to be relaxed. Like nothing in the immediate vicinity qualified as a threat worth adjusting his posture for.
"So this is the new kid." Stark said it more to himself than anyone else, looking Axiros over with open curiosity. "The one who went up against a peak Pulse Realm Resonant. Powered by the Old Ones, no less." He shook his head slowly. "Unbelievable. They run about a realm above their base when they're influenced. Usually, that's a death sentence for anyone in the way."
"Uncle." Kael pinched the bridge of his nose. "Introductions first."
"Back in my day, we didn't need introductions before getting to the point. People just talked. None of this-"
"Please." Kael's expression was the specific kind of tired that only came from having heard something many times before. "Not the back in my day talk. Anything but that."
"Alright then." Stark straightened up with exaggerated dignity, pressing a hand flat against his chest like a man preparing to deliver a speech of great personal importance. "Since nobody here appreciates the natural flow of conversation, I will introduce myself properly."
He cleared his throat.
"I'm Stark," he continued, settling back. "Stark Beer. I won't be telling you anything beyond that for now, you're not strong enough to be carrying that information yet, kid. No offence."
'Men who lead with how strong they are tend to be the most predictable ones in the room,' Axiros thought, watching him with a pleasantly blank expression. 'Strong body. Rigid mindset. One of Lucian's teachers, if the novel held true here. Which, so far, everything had.'
He filed it away and smiled politely.
"I'm Axiros. I don't know my last name."
Stark studied him for a moment, something unreadable moving briefly behind his eyes. Then he laughed, loud, unself-conscious, the kind of,laugh that filled a room without asking permission.
"Well then, Axiros-with-no-last-name, get comfortable. You're going to be here a few years." He grinned like this was excellent news for everyone involved.